Alex Barros rolled his Honda RC211V into the garage, pulled off his helmet and gloves, and began the debrief.
How was it? crew chief Erv Kanemoto asked. In heavily accented English, the Brazilian said Better—or at least that’s what Kanemoto thought he heard.
Another famous rider/crew...
Another famous rider/crew chief pairing was three-time World Champion Freddie Spencer and renowned tuner Erv Kanemoto. Kanemoto was not only known for his ability to extract power from a two-stroke, but also his ability to decipher a rider’s feedback and translate that into improving the motorcycle.
The suspension change may have been better, but the lap times didn’t reflect it: Barros had gone slower. Kanemoto made a more radical change to confirm what Barros had told him and sent him back out. After several more laps, all of which were slower, the question was asked again and the answer was the same: Better. The thoroughly analytical Kanemoto couldn’t figure out why Barros was continually going slower while his subjective comments were the oppositeuntil he delved further into the Brazilian’s response.
What he was saying was that it was badder,’ Kanemoto said with a laugh, recalling the incident several years later. It was badder.’
Kanemoto worked with a number of world champions, Max Biaggi, Wayne Gardner, Luca Cadalora, John Kocinski and Barry Sheene, but it was his work with Freddie Spencer that will always be remembered. The pair teamed up in 1982 and were almost instantly successful. Spencer became the youngest-ever 500cc World Champion in 1983 when he beat Kenny Roberts in an epic battle. Two years later Spencer won the 500cc and 250cc titles, the last rider to accomplish the doublea feat that will never be repeated. What made it possible was that the quiet genius from San Jose could communicate with the church-going prodigy from Shreveport. For instance, when Spencer said the bike was banging out, it meant the engine was misfiring.
Tom Houseworth and Ben Spies...
Tom Houseworth and Ben Spies are yet another example of a longtime crew chief/rider pairing. The two have won three AMA Superbike championships, a World Superbike Championship together and have moved up to the factory Yamaha team for 2011.
Tom Houseworth has been with Ben Spies since he began at Yoshimura Suzuki in 2004. I know his important terms, entry’, tip-in’, turnback’, Houseworth said. Other people, you can teach them the terms, but when you’re saying it and you’re hauling ass in your hour session, some people will revert back to what they know.
You’ve got to be able to come in and every little thing that you talk about, the crew chief has to be the one that’s heard you say something like that before, remarked Kevin Schwantz, and he goes back to his notes, and goes, Hey, we stumbled back across the problem wherever it was and we did this and we fixed it.’ I see it a little bit nowadays: a rider comes in from a practice and he just says, It’s just a piece of sh*t. I can’t tell you anything good about it, it’s a piece of sh*t.’ Well, a crew chief can’t really work with that. As a rider, you’ve got to, even in the worst of situations, you’ve got to remember that the communication is that link and if you ever stop communicating, it’s not going to get any better. We’ve got to know what it’s doing exactly.
Schwantz’ first crew chief, Simon Tonge, had worked with a number of very good riders, including Barry Sheene, but never as a crew chief, and Schwantz always felt that they weren’t making much headway in dialing in the Suzuki RGV500. For 1993, the team replaced Tonge with veteran crew chief Stuart Shenton. What Stuart kept telling me is we’re not going to solve all these problems at once, but we’ve got to use every weekend like it’s a test, Schwantz remembers. And the more that I worked with him and the more that I rode with him, the more confidence I got with him. We were able to make it a better machine in more areas. It turned out to be good. Schwantz would win his only world title in his first year working with Shenton.